The Hungry Earth

The Hungry Earth is a play by Isaiah Maishe Maponya.

Translations and adaptations

A full length play about the mine-workers and their struggle against oppression under Apartheid. Drawing much on the structure of Brecht’s The Measures Taken, it presents a powerful "lecture-demonstration" of black working-class life in South Africa.

First written and performed in 1979 and the text first published by Polyptoton (London) in 1981. It was first anthologized in Temple Hauptfleisch and Ian Steadman: South African Theatre – Four Plays and an Introduction (HAUM Educational, 1984), and thereafter included in a variety of other collections, including: Postcolonial Plays (Routledge); South African Plays (Nick Hern Books) and Maponya's own collection, Doing Plays for a Change (Wits University Press).

Performance history in South Africa

1979: Originally performed by the newly formed Bahumutsi Players at the Donaldson Orlando Cultural Club in Soweto in May, then in the Wits Box.

1982: Performed by the Bahumutsi Players as a Baxter Theatre Production, directed by Maponya, starring Sydwell Yola, Simon Mosikile, Velile Nxazonke.

1983: Presented at the National Theatre London by the Bahumutsi Players, under the direction of Ian Steadman, later touring Britain and Germany.

Sources

Brian Barrow and Yvonne Williams-Short, (eds.). 1988. Theatre Alive! The Baxter Story 1977-1987 The Baxter Theatre.

Loren Kruger 1999. The Drama of South Africa: Plays, Pageants and Publics Since 1910 London: Routledge

Percy Tucker. 1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

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